Canopy Applauds Torstar’s Global Operations for New Commitment to the World’s Ancient and Endangered Forests

Posted: 3/29/2013 | By: Press Release | Canopy Planet

March 28, 2013 (Toronto) –Torstar Corporation (TSX:TS-B) has launched corporate-wide Environmental Purchasing Principles to eliminate the use of fiber from ancient and endangered forests, empower business units with the option of choosing to preference post-consumer recycled fiber and encourage improvement of all forest certification systems with Forest Stewardship Council certification (FSC) as the target standard.

Torstar has launched these principles with a commitment to encourage their suppliers’ engagement of environmental organizations to forward protection of high conservation value forests and encourage suppliers to develop papers that are more ecologically sensitive. These principles apply to Harlequin, known the world over for the publication of romance novels, as well as the Star Media Group and Metroland Media Group, which together publish over 125 newspapers across Canada.

Canopy, an independent environmental not-for-profit who works with over 700 forest product customer companies has collaborated with Torstar Corporation for several years and was engaged to support and advise on the development of these principles over the last 8 months. Canopy is now set to build on this momentum for release of their International Newspaper Environmental Leadership Report later this year. All newspaper media companies and publishers are invited to complete the voluntary, no-fee online survey to gain third party recognition of their sustainability efforts. The survey can be found at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Newspaper2013.

"We are excited by the leadership shown by Torstar, and look forward to supporting them in implementing the principles," said Tara Sawatsky, Canopy's lead with the newspaper sector. "This step by Torstar will position them well for Canopy's upcoming Newspaper Environmental Leadership Report, hopefully other companies will be inspired to put policies in place as well."

“Torstar’s readers can now start their day with a hot cup of coffee and the newspaper and end it with an equally steamy romance novel, knowing that our planet’s forests are better off,” said Nicole Rycroft, Canopy Founder and Executive Director. “As a global publishing leader, Torstar deserve congratulations for their corporate wide approach to protecting forests such as Canada’s Boreal through strong principles that guide their paper procurement,” she said.

Torstar has an environmental management structure including an Environmental Steering Committee comprised of senior representatives of various Torstar business units and four sub-committees to oversee the application of sustainability commitments throughout their operations.